Veterans, Veteran's or Veterans'?

Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium ( Jackson, Mississippi)

Veterans Memorial Stadium (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)

Veterans Memorial Stadium (Troy, Alabama)

Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena (Jacksonville, Florida)

Veterans Memorial Stadium (League City, Texas)

Veterans Memorial Stadium (Long Beach, California)

Veterans Bridge (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

Veterans Bridge (St. Cloud, Minnesota)

Veterans International Bridge at Los Tomates  (between the cities of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas)

Veteran's Bridge (Pueblo, Colorado)

Veterans' Glass City Skyway (Toledo, Ohio)

According to the preceding list, the first nine structures honor or memorialize veterans.  Veteran's in the name of the tenth structure indicates "possessed or owned by a veteran."  Veterans' in the name of the last structure indicates "possessed or owned by more than one veteran."

"Cadillac tax" IRS notice regarding the Affordable Care Act

Section 4980I — Excise Tax on High Cost Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage Notice 2015-16   This notice is intended to initiate and inform the process of developing regulatory guidance regarding the excise tax on high cost employer-sponsored health coverage under § 4980I of the Internal Revenue Code (Code).  Section 4980I, which was added to the Code by the Affordable Care Act, applies to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017.  Under this provision, if the aggregate cost of “applicable employer-sponsored coverage” (referred to in this notice as applicable coverage) provided to an employee exceeds a statutory dollar limit, which is revised annually, the excess is subject to a 40% excise tax.  Read the 24-page notice at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-15-16.pdf

Any time you cut fruits like bananas, pears, and apples that you don’t want to turn brown, simply squeeze fresh or bottled lemon juice over them and toss the fruit to coat.  Make sure to cover the fruit tightly with plastic wrap, or place it in an air-tight container until you are ready to eat it.  http://www.centercutcook.com/how-to-prevent-fruit-from-turning-brown/

"Ex Machina” is a 2015  movie about men and the machines they make.  Alex Garland, who wrote and directed, has named the search engine in the futuristic film after Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1930s "Blue Book."  Wittgenstein's Blue Book begins "What is the meaning of a word?"  Find the 120-page manuscript at http://digital.library.pitt.edu/u/ulsmanuscripts/pdf/31735061817932.pdf

A proposal by the head of the Federal Communications Commission on May 27, 2015 would strengthen consumers' rights and give phone companies the green light to offer technologies to block most robocalls and spam text messages.  Under Wheeler's plan, consumers could more easily stop these robocalls by simply telling the caller “in any reasonable way at any time” to stop calling.  Currently, companies often require written notification if consumers want the calls to stop.  The rules would also prevent a consumer with a new phone number from being subjected to robocalls authorized by the previous owner.  Companies that use automatic dialing technology would have to stop after making just one call once learning the number has been reassigned.  There would be limited exceptions for free robocalls or texts to alert consumers of possible fraud to their bank accounts or remind them to refill medication.  Consumers could opt out of those calls and texts as well.  The Do Not Call Registry was established in 2003 and had 218 million actively registered phone numbers as of Sept. 30, 2014.  In most cases, telemarketers are not allowed to call numbers on the list.  And most telemarketing robocalls have been illegal since 2009.  Jim Puzzanghera  

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-robocalls-fcc-20150527-story.html

May 29, 2015  Eating chocolate every day can help you lose weight?  If it sounds too good to be true--that's because the chocolate diet study that made headlines around the world last year was all an elaborate hoax.  Now those responsible are going public with the story behind the bogus diet study and the media frenzy that followed.  It was a carefully planned effort to expose the prevalence of junk science and unchecked, hype-driven press coverage.  "The world is just drowning in all this pseudoscience" about diet and nutrition, science journalist John Bohannon, one of the collaborators in the project, told CBS News, "and when there is science, it's very poorly reported.  We [journalists] should be doing a better job, and the only way to do it is to kind of shock the system."  In an article posted on the website io9.com, Bohannon explains how the chocolate diet story came about.  He was first approached by a German TV producer, Peter Onneken, who was working with Diana Löbl and others on a documentary film about junk science.  It's a topic Bohannon--who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology--has covered extensively.  He previously conducted a sting operation, published inScience in 2013, exposing how some unscrupulous open-access journals would publish fake scientific studies for a fee without subjecting them to peer review.  Bohannon and the filmmakers concocted a plan to prove just how easy it is to turn bad science into big headlines.  They created a website for the Institute of Diet and Health (a group they made up), recruited a doctor and analyst, and paid research subjects to take part in a small clinical trial they would run to test the effects of eating chocolate.  Then Bohannon would use his media savvy to get the results published and publicized.   "I know what you're thinking,"  Bohannon writes. "The study did show accelerated weight loss in the chocolate group--shouldn't we trust it?  Isn't that how science works?"  Then he explains:  "Here's a dirty little science secret:  If you measure a large number of things about a small number of people, you are almost guaranteed to get a 'statistically significant' result.  Our study included 18 different measurements--weight, cholesterol, sodium, blood protein levels, sleep quality, well-being, etc.--from 15 people.  (One subject was dropped.)  That study design is a recipe for false positives....We didn't know exactly what would pan out--the headline could have been that chocolate improves sleep or lowers blood pressure--but we knew our chances of getting at least one 'statistically significant' result were pretty good."  Brent Hofacker  Read extensive article at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-chocolate-diet-hoax-fooled-millions/

Memphis, the city where B.B. King got his musical start, paid final tribute to the blues guitar master May 27, 2015, as thousands walking in the rain with his hearse shouted, "long live the king!"  King died May 14 in Las Vegas at the age of 89.  At the head of the procession was a Gibson guitar given the name Lucille, just like all the others King accumulated over the course of his 60-year career.  A band played "When The Saints Go Marching In," as the mourners proceeded down Beale Street.  After getting his start in its clubs, King became known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," which eventually became B.B. King.  His real name was Riley B. King.  https://fiostrending.verizon.com/news/read/category/News/hashtag/News/article/afp-memphis_pays_final_tribute_to_blues_legend_bb_king-afp

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1303  May 29, 2015  On this date in 1919, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin.  On this date in 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra recorded Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the best-selling single in history.

Berckmans, Prosper Julius A (1829-1910) was born near Brussels, Belgium in 1829.  He spent his boyhood on the estates of his father, Dr. Louis Berckmans, who was a noted horticulturist.   He was educated in France and when he returned home to Belgium in 1847, he spent the next three years working on his father’s estates and studying botany at the Botanical Gardens of Brussels.  In 1850 Berckmans came to the United States, and in 1851, Prosper’s father, Dr. Berckmans, brought his family and a great collection of plants to a farm in Plainfield, New Jersey.  Prosper moved south in 1857 to establish the Fruitland Nurseries, near Augusta, Georgia by purchasing a half interest in the nurseries of D. Redmond.  The following year he bought the other half interest and became sole owner.  Berckmans imported seeds, cuttings, and plants.  In the later years he grew many different kinds of camellias and plants suited to the Georgia climate.  He became a life member of the American Pomological Society in 1860 and was elected president in 1887.  He founded the Georgia State Horticultural Society in 1876 and was its president until his death in 1910.  In 1883-84 he went to Europe for the U. S. government to collect horticultural exhibits for the New Orleans Exposition of 1884-1885.  He was the editor of Farmer and Gardener for several years.  He retired in 1907.  http://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/seeds/berckmansprosper-ja.html

From the fruit trees in orchards to the dogwoods lining neighborhood streets to oaks casting shade in sweltering summer heat, the footprint of Fruitland Nurseries is visible across the Southeast.  The Augusta National Golf Club basks in the same favor and protects it from falling into obscurity.  On May 25, 1979, the property was entered on the National Register of Historic Places.  Eight years after Prosper’s death, Fruitland Nurseries closed.  The acreage stayed in the possession of the Berckmans family until 1925, when they sold it to a developer from Miami who set sights on building a resort for Northerners wintering in Augusta.  When his finances fell through, the timing was perfect for recently retired amateur golfer Bobby Jones, who appreciated the land’s potential to change the face of the region.  To the credit of the golf course’s designers, instead of forcing the old nursery to accommodate its new purpose, they enabled the links to accommodate the land’s previous function.  Like drawings on tracing paper laid atop each other, the Augusta National overlays the outlines of Fruitland Nurseries.  This idea to lay the property’s future over the lines of its past made the picturesque scenes of the Augusta National grounds the ones that fans of golf and of spring cherish today.  Fruitland Manor, a model of innovative architecture and former home of the Berckmans family, stands at the end of Magnolia Lane, which was planted from seed by the Berckmans.  The big oak tree behind the clubhouse has rooted there since the 1850s.  http://www.augustamagazine.com/Augusta-Magazine/April-2014-1/The-Birthplace-of-the-Southern-Landscape/

Augusta was originally a nursery owned by a Belgian horticulturist named Prosper Berckmans.  That's why all the holes are named after trees.  The first, Tea Olive, is a 445-yard par 4 . . .   Breaking 80 is the Promised Land, and getting there for the first time is like meeting Saint Peter at the pearly gate--it trumps playing Augusta National, Pebble Beach, and St. Andrews combined.  Miracle at Augusta, a novel by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge  (Miracle at Augusta is the sequel to Miracle on the 17th Green.)

The Football Novels of John Grisham  Read summaries of The Bleachers and Playing for Pizza at http://www.life123.com/arts-culture/american-authors/john-grisham/the-football-novels-of-john-grisham.shtml

Patrick Rothfuss was born June 6, 1973 in Madison, Wisconsin, and received his B.S. in English from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point in 1999 after spending nine years as an undergraduate exploring various majors such as Chemical Engineering, Clinical Psychology, and others.  He contributed to The Pointer, the campus paper and produced a widely-circulated parody warning about the Goodtimes Virus.  He graduated in 1999, received an MA at Washington State University, and returned to teach at Stevens Point.  In 2002, he won the Writers of the Future 2002 Second Quarter competition with "The Road to Levinshir", an excerpt from his then-unpublished novel The Wise Man's Fear.  In August 2012, Rothfuss began a monthly podcast called The Story Board on fantasy, featuring authors such as Terry Brooks and Brandon Sanderson.  The Story Board ran for 8 episodes.  Rothfuss organizes the charity Worldbuilders, which, since 2008, has raised over $2 million for Heifer International, a charity which provides livestock, clean water, education and training for communities in the developing world.  

Find a list of his awards and honors at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Rothfuss

Recent mini-vacation: 

Saturday, May 23, 2015

lunch at Cleveland Museum of Art Provenance Restaurant http://www.clevelandart.org/visit/provenance/about-provenance, tour the art museum where four of my favorite paintings were by Georgia O'Keeffe http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1987.141 Grant Wood http://www.clevelandart.org/art/2002.2 Edward Hopper http://www.clevelandart.org/art/2647.1931 and Pablo Picasso http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1969.22 

tour Cleveland Botanical Gardens, stay overnight at Glidden House, 1901 Ford Drive  constructed in 1910 by Francis Kavanaugh and Mary Grasselli Glidden  Francis Kavanaugh Glidden, son of the founder of the Glidden Paint and Varnish Company, originally lived on East 55^th Street in Cleveland until the completion of the Glidden House.  After a two-year construction period, Mr. and Mrs. Glidden, with their only daughter Ida Winifred moved to their new home at the corner of Ford and Magnolia Drives.  Although the house faced Ford Drive, a second door on the home’s front entry was created to allow for a more prestigious Magnolia Drive address.  This section of Magnolia Drive has since become Juniper Drive and the address of the house has been changed to 1901 Ford Drive.  In 1953,Western Reserve University (now known as Case Western Reserve University) purchased the house for the Department of Psychology and later it was used for the Law School Annex.  In 1987, the University leased the Glidden House to a group of investors who have renovated the mansion opened it as a bed and breakfast in 1989.  http://www.gliddenhouse.com/glidden-house-history/  dinner at Trentina Restaurant located on the Glidden House grounds

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Walk around Case Western Reserve campus, seeing the law school and--next to it--the school of management with metal on roof, sides and front designed by Frank Gehry.  The building is described as "peculiar" with ice and snow in winter sliding off  its curving roof made of 20,000 stainless-steel shingles at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-03-01-peculiar-building_x.htm and "dramatic, thoughtful and provocative" at http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/architect-frank-gehrys-dramatic-design-for-case-western-reserve-university-management-school-unveiled-77967427.html

Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) near University Circle and Little Italy  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Contemporary_Art_Cleveland

lunch at the new Heinen's grocery store in the historic Cleveland Trust Building   Heinen's co-owners and fraternal twins Jeff and Tom Heinen, who head the grocery chain based in Warrensville Heights inserted a full-service, 27,000-square-foot supermarket in the 1908 bank, a widely admired masterpiece at 900 Euclid Ave. designed by George Browne Post, architect of the New York Stock Exchange.  http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/heinens_opens_downtown_superma.html  Heinen's owners, working with Cleveland architect John Williams of Process Creative Studios, have tried to save as much of the original fabric of the Rotunda as possible.  Williams said that all remaining original material and decoration in the Rotunda has been preserved, including areas of marble floor tiles revealed when rugs were removed from the second-floor balcony overlooking what was the banking lobby.  Steven Litt  See pictures at http://www.cleveland.com/architecture/index.ssf/2015/01/first_look_design_of_new_downt.html

The Literary Landmarks Association was founded in 1986 to encourage the dedication of historic literary sites.  The first dedication was at Slip F18 in Bahia Mar, Florida, the anchorage of the Busted Flush, the houseboat home of novelist John D. MacDonald's protagonist Travis McGee.  Local Friends groups, State Friends, Trustees, and libraries may apply to dedicate a Literary Landmark.  When an appropriate landmark is identified, the sponsoring group plans a dedication ceremony and applies to United for Libraries for official recognition.  Full details of planning a Literary Landmark dedication can be found on the PDF Designating a Literary Landmark.  Literary Landmarks™ is a trademark of United for Libraries. http://www.ala.org/united/products_services/literarylandmarks

Local library officials and Nancy Drew fans will celebrate the 85th anniversary of the young female super sleuth and the character’s author with a dedication and convention in Toledo.  A Literary Landmark will be dedicated to the Nancy Drew series and its author and longtime Toledo resident, Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson, at the Main Toledo-Lucas County Public Library on Saturday, May 30, 2015.  Raised in rural Iowa, Mrs. Benson was interested in writing from a young age.  She published her first story in St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine, when she was a teenager.  Mrs. Benson studied journalism at the University of Iowa and became the program’s first female graduate.  She spent decades writing for The Blade and the former Toledo Times.  She was still writing in The Blade newsroom until the day she died in 2002, at the age of 96.  Mrs. Benson’s best-known works were published under an entirely different name:  Carolyn Keene.  Using the Keene pen name, Mrs. Benson gave life to the much-loved character of young detective Nancy Drew.  Mrs. Benson authored 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew novels.  http://www.toledoblade.com/Books/2015/05/25/Detective-author-get-Landmark-dedication.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1302  May 27, 2015  On this date in 1930, the 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opened to the public.  On this date in 1933, the Century of Progress World's Fair opened in Chicago. 

2015:  There have been 47 vice presidents of the United States, from John Adams to Joe Biden.  Originally, the Vice President was the person who received the second most votes for President in the Electoral College.  However, in the election of 1800, a tie in the electoral college between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr led to the selection of the President by the House of Representatives.  To prevent such an event from happening again, the Twelfth Amendment was added to the Constitution, creating the current system where electors cast a separate ballot for the vice presidency.  The Vice President's primary function is to succeed to the presidency if the President dies, resigns, or is impeached and removed from office.  Nine vice presidents have ascended to the presidency in this way:  eight through the president's death, and one, Gerald Ford, through the president's resignation.  In addition, the Vice President serves as the President of the Senate and may choose to cast a tie-breaking vote on decisions made by the Senate.  Prior to passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, a vacancy in the office of the Vice President could not be filled until the next election.  Such vacancies were common; sixteen occurred before the 25th Amendment was ratified–as a result of seven deaths, one resignation (John C. Calhoun, who resigned to enter Congress), and eight cases in which the vice president succeeded to the presidency.  This amendment allowed for a vacancy to be filled with appointment by the President and confirmation by both chambers of the U.S. Congress.  Since the Amendment's passage, two vice presidents have been appointed through this process, Gerald Ford of Michigan in 1973 and Nelson Rockefeller of New York in 1974.  Find a list of vice-presidents at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Vice_Presidents_of_the_United_States

The suffix FY is a root word that means make.  It is very simple and is added to countless words.  FY makes a verb, and the past tense is FIED.  Just change the y to i and add ed  http://www.english-for-students.com/fy.html  Find 125 words using FY including nutrify and dulcify at http://wordinfo.info/unit/872/s:albify   FY comes from Latin, and besides make, also can mean:  do, build, cause, produce.

The Tainter gate is a type of radial arm floodgate used in dams and canal locks to control water flow.  It is named for Wisconsin structural engineer Jeremiah Burnham Tainter.  A side view of a Tainter gate resembles a slice of pie with the curved part of the piece facing the source or upper pool of water and the tip pointing toward the destination or lower pool.  The curved face or skinplate of the gate takes the form of a wedge section of cylinder.  The straight sides of the pie shape, the trunnion arms, extend back from each end of the cylinder section and meet at a trunnion which serves as a pivot point when the gate rotates.  Pressure forces acting on a submerged body act perpendicular to the body's surface.  The design of the Tainter gate results in every pressure force acting through the centre of the imaginary circle which the gate is a section of, so that all resulting pressure force acts through the pivot point of the gate, making construction and design easier.  When a Tainter gate is closed, water bears on the convex (upstream) side.  When the gate is rotated, the rush of water passing under the gate helps to open and close the gate.  The rounded face, long radial arms and trunnion bearings allow it to close with less effort than a flat gate.  Tainter gates are usually controlled from above with a chain/gearbox/electric motor assembly.  The Tainter gate is used in water control dams and locks worldwide.  The Upper Mississippi River basin alone has 321 Tainter gates, and the Columbia River basin has 195.  A Tainter gate is also used to divert the flow of water to San Fernando Power Plant on the Los Angeles Aqueduct.  The Tainter gate was invented and first implemented in Menomonie, Wisconsin.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tainter_gate

Find useful information on states at http://state.1keydata.com/ and http://www.50states.com/nickname.htm#.VUTM9PlVhBc

Overview of James Jones’s Trilogy on World War II and Soldiering  published in World Literature   From Here to Eternity is not a combat novel; it is an army novel, arguably the finest ever written by an American. It is, in fact, dedicated to the U.S. Army, and follows three major characters, Pvt. Prewitt, Mess/Sgt. Stark and First/Sgt. Warden through the miseries of the caste-ridden, authoritarian peacetime army up to the symbolic moment it undergoes transmogrification, becoming with the Japanese attack, a completely different creature. In the words of the author:  One of the problems I came up against, with the trilogy as a whole, appeared as soon as I began The Thin Red Line in 1959.  In the original conception, first as a single novel, and then as a trilogy, the major characters such as 1st/Sgt Warden, Pvt. Prewitt and Mess/Sgt Stark were meant to continue throughout the entire work.  Unfortunately, the dramatic structure — I might even say, the spiritual content — of the first book demanded that Prewitt be killed in the end of it…. It may seem like a silly problem now.  It wasn’t then…. I could not just resurrect him.  And have him there again, in the flesh, wearing the same name…. I solved the problem by changing the names…. So in The Thin Red Line, 1st/Sgt Warden became 1st/Sgt Welsh, Pvt. Prewitt became Pvt. Witt, Mess/Sgt Stark became Mess/Sgt Storm. While remaining the same people as before. In Whistle, Welsh becomes Mart Winch, Witt becomes Bobby Prell, Storm becomes John Strange.  Jones also points out that unlike the three novels of John Dos Passos’s trilogy, USA, the three novels of his trilogy stand alone as a fully realized works.  Jones, in effect, had it both ways:  he devised a scheme that permitted him to use the same characters, and continue the same master theme, but also permitted him to write three separate narratives, each of which has its own themes, structure and mood.  https://medium.com/world-literature/overview-of-james-jones-s-trilogy-on-world-war-ii-and-soldiering-f50ede48713f

Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the last Monday of May, honors men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.  Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.  The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history, requiring the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries.  By the late 1860s Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.  http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history 

Civil War songs:  Dixie, The Battle Cry of Freedom, The Bonnie Blue Flag, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Goober Peas, Marching Through Georgia,  All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (sung in both Civil War and Spanish-American War).  

See also http://www.americancivilwar.com/Civil_War_Music/civil_war_music.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1301  May 25, 2015  On this date in 1738, a treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ended  the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.  On this date in 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London.

Comprise is a transitive verb and means to be made up of, to consist of, and to include.  Examples:  The United States comprises 50 states.  A full deck comprises 52 cards.

Compose is also a transitive verb, but it has a slightly different meaning.  Compose is to make up the constituent parts of, to form the substance of something.  Examples:  Fifty states compose the United States.  Fifty-two cards compose a full deck.  Summary:  The whole comprises the parts.  The parts compose the whole.  You can use the phrase “is composed of,” but you cannot use the phrase “is comprised of.”  http://writingexplained.org/comprise-vs-compose-difference  NOTE that when you are in doubt, it is best to rewrite your sentence without using either comprise or compose.

Afrikaans is a Low Franconian West Germanic language descended from Dutch and spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia.  There are also speakers of Afrikaans in Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Germany, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  About 7.2 million people speak Afrikaans as a native language, and a further 8-15 million speak it as a second language.  Find alphabet, pronunciation, and links to resources at http://omniglot.com/writing/afrikaans.htm  

See also http://www.easyafrikaans.com/

Wall Street refers to the geographical concentration of financial service providers that constitutes New York’s financial district.  Its heart is the narrow thoroughfare of the same name in Lower Manhattan that is home to the New York Stock Exchange.  The term carries a wide spectrum of meanings that intersect geography, finance, and political economy.  The origins of Wall Street can be traced to the brushwood barricade erected by Peter Stuyvesant along the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam community of Dutch settlers in Lower Manhattan in 1653.  The “wall” was meant to protect the early settlers against attack from Lenape Indians, New England colonists, and the British (who dismantled it in 1699).  http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Wall_Street.aspx

MISHMASH   hodgepodge, jumble  Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix  first known use:  15th century  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mishmash  Find many recipes for mishmash soup on the Web. 

Search for these two phrases and find the short poems I enjoyed during National Poetry Month:  "given my heart a change of mood" and "woods are lovely dark and deep".

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Theoretically, there are 676 possibilities for duoliteral words in the English language.  Of these, only about 100 are real words

os  (aws)  noun  1.  A mouth or an orifice. [plural ora]  2.  A bone.  [plural ossa]

For 1:  From Latin os (mouth)  Earliest documented use:  1859
For 2:  From Latin os (bone)  Earliest documented use:  1400

aa  (AH-ah)  noun  Lava having a rough surface.  From Hawaiian aa (to burn).  Earliest documented use:  1859.  Aa is one of the two kinds of lava typically found in Hawaiian volcanoes.  The other kind is pahoehoe, one with a smooth, ropy surface.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Bertil Magnusson   Subject:  os  The word os for mouth of a river was used in Swedish names for cities.  Uppsala was earlier East arOS and today a city Västerås (West-arOS) you can still hear os in the name.

From:  Max Montel  Subject:  os  One of my favorite Scrabble duoliterals!  It always makes me think of my beloved 7th grade Latin teacher Mrs. Ellis, who, when frustrated with a student, would say either “shut up-us” or more often, “shut your os.”

From:  Alan Abbey  Subject:  aa  I just couldn’t let this word -- one of my favorites for a number of reasons -- go unremarked.  It’s one of the first “abnormal” Scrabble words I learned and have since taught to my wife and children, who now use it regularly despite their initial objections and scorn.  Finally, while I have never been to Hawai’i, I became familiar with aa lava when I lived in Central Oregon, where aa is available in abundance, as well, and huge, train-sized tunnels have been carved out by volcanic action.  Crushed aa lava is used to “salt” roads in winter to improve traction.  Aa’s crystalline structure is excellent for icy conditions and doesn’t rot out vehicles as does rock salt.

From:  Peter Wing   Subject:  aa  There is no Hawaiian word “aa”.  Most people assume that the lava type, other than pahoehoe, is aʻa, but aʻa actually means “small root, vein, artery.../womb, offspring.  Time for a kahako:  ʻaʻā means to “burn, blaze, glow; fire ...”.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  ʻaʻā is the lava type (“lava” can also be luaʻi pele, ʻōahi, or ʻalā)!  And if you capitalize it, it is the star Sirius.

Thule was a far-northern location in classical European literature and cartography.  Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway, an identification supported by modern calculations.  Other interpretations include Orkney, Shetland, and Scandinavia.  In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Thule was often identified as Iceland or Greenland.  Another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea.  The term Ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".  Sometimes it is used as a proper noun (Ultima Thule) as the Latin name for Greenland when Thule is used for Iceland.   The Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC.  He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade-goods were coming from.  See graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule

vade mecum  noun  plural  vade mecums  1.  a book for ready reference  2.  something regularly carried about by a person  Latin, go with me  first known use:  1629

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vade%20mecum

Window blinds with slats existed in ancient Egypt and Pompeii long before the city of Venice was founded in AD 452.  Those slats were fixed, however.  In 1757, a French craftsman advertised blinds with adjustable slats, probably not his own invention but definitely a new idea.  By the end of the 1700s they were common in wealthier houses, shops, churches, and public buildings in England and the English colonies.  Only the English called them Venetian blinds.  In Italy, they were persiana; in France, jalousie a la persienne.  This suggests that they originated in the East, perhaps in the Persian Empire or beyond, in China or India.  They probably got the name Venetian Blinds courtesy of having come via Venice, a city that dominated trade with the East.  https://historymyths.wordpress.com/tag/origins-of-venetian-blinds/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1300  May 22, 2015  On this date in 1811, Giulia Grisi, Italian opera singer, was born.  On this date in 1987, the first ever Rugby World Cup kicked off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.

A ham is a pork cut that's taken from a hog's upper hind leg.  There are three types of American hams:  city hams, country hams, and fresh hams.  City hams are the most common.  They're soaked in brine (or injected with it) and then boiled or lightly smoked.  Country hams are dry-cured and then smoked and aged for added flavor.  Fresh hams aren't cured at all and need to be cooked.  America also imports several dry-cured hams from abroad, including prosciutto, Bayonne ham, Serrano ham, Black Forest ham, Westphalian ham, York ham, and Ardennes ham.  See descriptions and pictures at http://www.foodsubs.com/MeatcureHams.html

Collage derives its name from the French verb coller, to glue.  The work of art is made by gluing things to the surface.  Collage became an art form during the Synthetic Cubist period of Picasso and Braque.  At first, Pablo Picasso glued oil cloth to his surface of Still Life with Chair Caning in May of 1912.  He glued a rope around the edge of the oval canvas. Georges Braque then glued imitation wood-grained wallpaper to his Fruit Dish and Glass (September 1912).  Braque's work is called papier collé (glued or pasted paper), a specific type of collage.  During the Dada movement, Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1978) glued bits of photographs from magazines and advertising in such works as Cut with a Kitchen Knife, (1919-20).  Fellow Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887-1948) also glued bits of paper he found in newspapers, advertisements and other discarded matter beginning in 1919.  Schwitters called his collages and assemblages Merzbilder, a word derived from the German word "Kommerz" (Commerce, as in banking) which had been on a fragment of an advertisement in his first work, and bilder ("pictures").  The exclusive use of photos in collage is called photomontage.  http://arthistory.about.com/od/glossary_c/a/c_collage.htm

For more than 50 years, Werner Pfeiffer (German-American, born 1937) has experimented with the multiple uses of paper as both a canvas and a structural material.  Much of his work as a sculptor, printmaker and painter suggests an attraction to machines and machine-like constructions.  His drawings are schematic, his dimensional works project into space claiming their own territory and his complex artist books have moving parts.  He is fascinated by puzzles and contradictions, metaphors and wordplay, and this curiosity inspires works that are thought-provoking in themselves.  A prodigious artist, Mr. Pfeiffer's works on paper have been shown and collected internationally.  The nearly 200 unique and limited-edition works of Pfeiffer's art in the exhibition at The Toledo Museum of Art from Feb. 6-May 3, 2015 included drawings, dimensional prints, 3D collage, and sculptural and experimental books.  His award-winning designs have been widely published in magazines such as Print, Modern Publicity and Art Direction.  His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the 9/11 Memorial Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), among others.  http://explorepaper.toledomuseum.org/  

What impacted Werner Pfeiffer most as a young boy in World War II Germany was the scarcity.  There was no paper; there was no books,”  Mr. Pfeiffer said. “I grew up with a real respect for paper and it has affected me all my life.”  “Digital life has brought a kind of sterility.  Everything we do on a computer is going through one system, and that’s fingers on a keyboard, whether you make a drawing, write music, whatever it is,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.  “When you think of paper, the sense of richness, of surfaces, even of sound when you crinkle it, that’s something completely void in the digital world.  It really makes people kind of starved for the touch and feel of paper.”  http://toledomuseum.tumblr.com/post/108283896888/the-possibilities-of-paper

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 adventure comedy film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning in supporting roles.  Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey.  Despite the fact that Ethan described the Odyssey as "one of my favorite storyline schemes" neither of the brothers had read the epic and were only familiar with its content through adaptations and numerous references to the Odyssey in popular culture.   According to the brothers, Nelson (who has a degree in classics from Brown University) was the only person on the set who had read the Odyssey.  The title of the film is a reference to the 1941 film Sullivan's Travels, in which the protagonist (a director) wants to film a fictional book about the Great Depression called O Brother, Where Art Thou?  Much of the music used in the film is period folk music.  This was the fifth film collaboration between the Coen Brothers and Deakins, and it was slated to be shot in Mississippi at a time of year when the foliage, grass, trees, and bushes would be a lush green.  It was filmed near locations in Canton, Mississippi and Florence, South Carolina in the summer of 1999.  After shooting tests, including film bipack and bleach bypass techniques, Deakins suggested digital mastering be used.  Deakins subsequently spent 11 weeks fine-tuning the look, mainly targeting the greens, making them a burnt yellow and desaturating the overall image timing the digital files.  This made it the first feature film to be entirely color corrected by digital means.  The Soggy Bottom Boys, the musical group that the main characters form, serve as accompaniment for the film.  The name is a homage to the Foggy Mountain Boys, a bluegrass band led by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.  In the film, the songs credited to the band are lip-synched by the actors, except that Tim Blake Nelson does sing his own vocals on "In the Jailhouse Now".  The actual musicians are Dan Tyminski (guitar and lead vocals), Harley Allen, and Pat Enright.  The band's hit single is Dick Burnett's "Man of Constant Sorrow", a song that had already enjoyed much success in real life. After the film's release, the fictitious band became so popular that the country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film, such as Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Sharp, and others, all got together and performed the music from the film in a Down from the Mountain concert tour which was filmed for TV and DVD.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Brother,_Where_Art_Thou%3F

Toe the line is the survivor of a set of phrases that were common in the nineteenth century; others were toe the mark, toe the scratch, toe the crack, or toe the trig.  In every case, the image was that of men lining up with the tips of their toes touching some line.  They might be on parade, or preparing to undertake some task, or in readiness for a race or fight.  The earliest recorded form is dated 1813, in a book by Hector Bull-Us (a pseudonym of James Kirke Paulding) with the title The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan.  This already had the modern figurative sense of conforming to the usual standards or rules:  “He began to think it was high time to toe the mark”.  Many early examples are from the British Navy, which is where it may have originated.  Toe the crack is an American form of the 1820s in reference to a crack in the floorboards that delineates a straight line.  Toe the scratch is from prize fighting, where scratch was the line drawn across the ring (often in the earth of an informal outdoor ring) to which the fighters were brought ready for the contest—it’s a close relative of to come up to scratch.  In toe the trig, trig is an old term for a boundary or centre line in various sports.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-toe2.htm

May 20, 2015  A group of travel websites claims that Delta Air Lines Inc. is cutting them and their users off from its data, adding to industry tensions over the way consumers shop for flights on the Internet.  Delta has removed its schedule and fare information from over a dozen sites, including TripAdvisor Inc., Hipmunk Inc. and CheapOair.com, saying it didn’t authorize the sites to use its data, according to a report to be released on Wednesday by the Travel Technology Association, a trade group for the sites.  The group said Delta’s move is part of a broader push by airlines to restrict how—and whether—sites can use their fare and schedule data.  The group says carriers including American Airlines Group Inc. and United Continental Holdings Inc. have recently adopted policies allowing them to limit how the sites use their data.  The spat marks the latest chapter in the struggle for control over airfare searches and seat purchases online.  Carriers increasingly are pushing fliers to their own sites, partly to improve sales of add-on products such as extra legroom and frequent-flier points.  And they have butted heads with the travel sites over booking fees.  In a dust-up last August, American temporarily withdrew its flight information from sites operated by Orbitz Worldwide Inc.  While the sites affected by Delta’s recent actions account for a relatively small share of total flight searches, the trade group says its members, which include the biggest travel websites, broadly fear that airlines are laying the groundwork for a gradual exodus from fare-comparison websites, a move that they say would make it easier for airlines to raise fares.

Jack Nicas  http://www.wsj.com/articles/travel-websites-allege-delta-air-lines-is-shutting-them-out-1432094461

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1299  May 20, 2015  On this date in 1609, Shakespeare's sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.  On this date in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.